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Flexible circuitry is frequently a one-way affair — we’ve seen bendy displays and touch layers, but rarely both in one surface. UC Berkeley is at last merging those two technologies through a plastic skin whose display reacts to touch. By curing a polymer on top of a silicon wafer, the school’s researchers found that they could unite a grid of pressure sensors with an OLED screen; they just had to remove the polymer to create a flexible skin. As the film-like material can be laminated on just about anything, it maylead to touch displays in places where they were previously impractical, or even very thin blood pressure sensors. It could also be easy to produce — since the skins use off-the-shelf chip manufacturing techniques, commercial products are well within reach.

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Via: Phys.org

Source: UC Berkeley

The Aptera concept car could be resurrected thanks to Zaptera USA.

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The technological advancements in medicine are often overlooked by the general public. Fact remains though that some amazing work is being done in this field. Take the new P3HT polymer for example, which can be used to create an artificial retina. It does not need any external power source like other artificial retinas for which a stimulator box is required. Other than the incident light, an artificial retina created out of P3HT polymer requires no power (other than the incoming light, which makes us wonder how well this works in low-light situations). (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Sony Announces Collaboration With Wyss Institute For Organ-On-Chip Technology, Xerox Digital Nurse Assistant Offers Information On The Double,

Aside from the sweltering daytime heat and the freezing night-time temperatures, the biggest problem for folks living in desert regions is finding sources of water. Researchers from Eindhoven University of Technology and Hong Kong Polytechnic have leveraged those temperature swings to help solve the arid region hydration conundrum with a cotton material that absorbs water straight from the surrounding air. Of course, it’s not your run-of-the-mill fabric woven from fluffy white stuff. This cloth is coated in a special polymer, called PNIPAAm, that’s hydrophilic (read: super absorbent) at temperatures 34°C and below, but becomes hydrophobic (read: repels water) when it gets any hotter.

In absorption mode, the cloth can hold 340 percent of its own weight — compared to just 18 percent without the polymer’s aid — and when it warms up, it releases the collected moisture as clean and pure potable water. So, it can help hydrate both plants and people in desert regions around the world. The boffins who created the stuff claim it’s reusable and can be used on locally-sourced cotton fabrics for a minimal, 12 percent cost increase given current manufacturing conditions. Not impressed? Well, the magical moisture-absorbing material may get even better, as the plan is to increase the amount of water the material can hold and lower the temperature threshold for its release.

Filed under: Wearables, Science, Alt

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Via: Extreme Tech

Source: Eindhoven University of Technology

The dream of ubiquitous technology revolves around cheaper materials, and polymer circuits could help make the dream a reality… if the solvents used to produce the circuits didn’t cause more problems than they cured, that is. The National Technical University of Athens has developed a more exacting technique that, like most good things in science, solves the crisis with lasers. The approach fires a laser at a polymer layer (covered by quartz) to throw some of that polymer on to a receiving layer; by moving the two layers, the scientists can print virtually any 2D circuit without resorting to potentially damaging chemicals. Any leftover worries center mostly around risks of changing the chemical composition as well as the usual need to develop a reliable form of mass production. Any long-term success with laser-printed polymers, however, could lead to more affordable technology as well as more instances of flexible and wearable gear — there might not be much of a downside to ditching the circuit status quo.

Filed under: Science

Athens university prints polymer circuits with lasers, speeds us towards low-cost electronics originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 16 Nov 2012 17:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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